High 5: Five Playlists You Need To Hear This Week

February 14 2017 by Ryan Pinkard

High 5: Five Playlists You Need To Hear This Week

February 14 2017 by Ryan Pinkard

TIDAL’s music editors are continuously at work crafting new playlists for different themes, genres, moods and occasions, as well as offering you a continuous flow of guest curated and exclusive artist playlists. To help guide you through the constant flow of great new content, we highlight five of our favorites right here. This is the TIDAL High 5.

The 59th Annual GRAMMY Awards went down Sunday, February 12, commemorating another big year in music. Packed with some fantastic live performances and the usual sprinkling of surprises, the night’s biggest winners included Adele, Beyoncé, Chance The Rapper, Drake and David Bowie. This playlist roundup of the major categories includes those artists and others who took home golden gramophones.

Of course, outside of the TV broadcast, in full the GRAMMYs honor musical achievements in over 80 categories and 30 fields. Ranging from jazz and folk to pop and R&B, this playlist samples some of the best-sounding music from select technical categories – perfect for enjoying with your TIDAL HiFi subscription.

¡Ahora! is your tastemaking destination for discovering all the popular new hits in the diverse Latin landscape, covering everything from pop, rock and hip-hop to indie, reggaeton, bachata and beyond. And if you’re looking for something a little more focused, head straight to Get Yours to get your full-on fix of the latest and greatest in reggaeton.

Elwan is the latest album from Tinariwen, the Grammy-winning band of Tuareg musicians from the desert of Northern Mali. Few countries on the African continent, or the world over, have a richer musical tradition than Mali. Almost completely swallowed by the Sahara desert, the dry West African nation doesn’t look appear to be a fertile hotbed for music (though it is hot). And yet, since well before the introduction of written histories and colonial borders, the Malians have intertwined music and culture to the point that the two are inseparable. In the West, Malian music is most associated with the desert blues of Ali Farka Touré and Tinariwen, the afropop of Salif Keita and Amadou & Mariam, and the kora player Toumani Diabate. We feature those artists and many others on this playlist.

Rest In Peace

Back in the 1960s, composer, arranger and producer David Axelrod first made a name for himself both in jazz and soul circles by recording landmark albums for the likes of Lou Rawls, Cannonball Adderley and the psychedelic garage rockers Electric Prunes. Yet by the mid-’90s, his name had become mostly forgotten. Enter DJ Shadow, who sampled Axelrod for vital parts of his revolutionary debut album, Endtroducing, in 1996. And just like that, the Axelrod sound was suddenly popping up on tracks by Madlib, Large Professor, Lil Wayne and on Dr. Dre’s “The Next Episode.” To borrow words from Questlove, “[David Axelrod] was so immersed in creativity and so pure with his arrangements he WAS hip-hop.”

Widely regarded as the greatest male jazz singer of his time, Alwyn “Al” Lopez Jarreau’s five-decade career rightly remains the envy of many a performer. Affectionately nicknamed “the Acrobat of Scat,” Jarreau first started in jazz before soon venturing into R&B and pop, being the only vocalist to date to win Grammy Awards in all three categories. Though his biggest hit was 1981′s “We’re in This Love Together,” his cultural impact included singing on “We are the World” and scoring the theme music to the Bruce Willis/Cybil Shepherd TV-series Moonlighting. A performer to the end, Al Jarreau toured up until his February 2017 death, passing away one month before his 77th birthday, just two days after announcing his retirement.

This year’s GRAMMYs ceremony featured a special tribute to disco legends, the Bee Gees. With over 220 million records sold to date and their spot in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame firmly secured thanks to a steady stream of hits throughout the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, the Bee Gees have plenty to boast about. Once you consider their successful collaborations with legends like Dionne Warwick, Barbra Streisand, Diana Ross and Celine Dion, not to mention credit for Saturday Night Fever, one of the best-selling soundtracks of all time, it’s easy to recognize that the Gibb brothers made up one of the finest pop groups in music history. Collected here are the biggest singles and best songs from the iconic band’s career.

But aside from making huge hits for themselves, the group also wrote an impressive list of songs for others, including “Hearbreaker” for Dionne Warwick, “Chain Reaction” for Diana Ross, Barbra Streisand’s best selling album, Guilty, and even Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers’ #1 country hit ”Islands in the Stream.” On Covering the Bee Gees, we’ve compiled these songs and some notable cover versions to honor the Bee Gees songwriting legacy.

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